The Customer

MyWay is one of the major European distributors of Volkswagen, Skoda, and Audi; it’s also the largest Belgian used car reseller, with over 3,000 vehicles on sale at any given time.

For MyWay, students are the primary target group. Although many students want a MyWay car, they often don’t have the money to buy it, so they turn to parents to support them. In planning the “Blackmail” campaign, MyWay wanted to engage both demographics.

The Challenge

While it’s clear that young drivers are the car’s end users, parents are ultimately in control of the purchase decision. The MyWay marketing team needed to devise a plan to include both target groups.

The came up with a prank: to give young drivers an opportunity to “blackmail” their parents into buying them a new car. MyWay ad banners led the younger demographic to the site where they could submit a form with a threat of their choice. The options were humorous and very apropos for this audience, featuring the “I’ll put a red sock in the white laundry basket” and the “I’ll change your WiFi password” threats, among others.

After the kids had submitted their “blackmailing preferences” along with their parents’ contact information, the parents received a personalized email with a threat. If they refused to act on it, the “NO” option led them to a landing page with “the last warning.” It’s also where a cookie was placed, and the digital prank started.

Using Selligent with Google DoubleClick’s technology, MyWay customized banner ads to display the parent’s and the kid’s names along with the chosen “threat.” Highly personalized “blackmail” ads followed the parents on various sites of their Internet browsing routes.